


In a nutshell

by Hypatia_66



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 15:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14023056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: Illya's style: the Nerd from UNCLE’s point of view





	In a nutshell

**Author's Note:**

> LJ Short Affair challenge. Prompts: fluid, orange

**In a nutshell**

Honestly, you shouldn’t leave Dr Kuryakin alone with a gadget for a minute. Not if you want to keep your own copyright on it. He would have it apart in seconds and discover all the shortcuts you’d taken – _and_ put them right. Of course, that was quite a good thing in some ways. Take the new communicator, for instance. It hadn’t worked too well to begin with but worked perfectly after he’d tampered with it. But apart from that … I mean, that’s not the point – he was Section Two, and only had visiting rights in Section Eight. He wouldn’t like it if we tried to get involved with _his_ section, would he?

So, you can see why we were a bit surprised when his partner blew in one morning asking to see what we were up to. So he said, anyway – he’d never done that before. Didn’t Dr K keep him up to date with what we do? we asked, a little satirically.

“Illya? You’re kidding,” he said, to our total lack of surprise. “No, he doesn’t, and that’s why I’m here. He’s missing and I want to know what he’s working on because Thrush wants it. They’re threatening to send us his fingers one by one till we let them have it.”

Ah. That didn’t sound good. We liked him really, whole and healthy for preference; he was quite useful sometimes. We showed him Dr K’s bench and what he’d been working on … see here, we said, he’s been writing a logical analysis.

“What’s that?”

We explained it was for a computer program. To analyse encrypted messages and work out what they’re saying and who’s sending them.

“Come again?” Mr Solo’s face was like one of those minimalist paintings – a blank picture.

We showed him the intercepts Dr K’d been working on – all in code. He’d been looking for patterns and written a program to recognise and how to decipher them.

“Does the program work?”

We saw him do a trial run a couple of days ago and look quite pleased afterwards. So, it was quite possible.

“Would the senders be aware of their messages being intercepted?”

Not unless you betrayed knowledge of it by acting on it, we said, and wondered if Dr K had done just that. Better not to ask.

“Suppose I bring some other messages we’ve picked up – could you run the program and see what they’re saying? We think they might be about him.”

Sure, we could. All right, Kuryakin was a demanding guy and had got under our skin in more ways than one, but if this would find him, well, we’d be quite pleased. We could be demanding on his account, and so we’d tell him – if he came back.

oo000oo

Solo brought us a series of intercepts and was about to dump them on Dr Kuryakin’s bench when he noticed how stained it was. “Is it safe to put stuff on here?” he asked, pointing to a particularly vivid orange stain.

That was ages ago, we said. It was wood stain – he’d had some notion it might be useful for weaponising.

“Weaponising? How?”

With fixative added, he’d thought you could fire it at something or someone, to make them forever identifiable afterwards. It would do that, of course, but we thought it was a bit awkward to use as well as possibly a bit over the top. In the end he thought the chances of needing to do so would be few and far between, and it might backfire, so he dropped it – literally, as it happens – and spilt it.

“Thereby marking it, just like a cat, so you know where he’s been. That’s my Illya in a nutshell.”

Right, we said noncommittally – thinking of the difficulties involved in confining that cat in a nutshell without getting badly scratched. He’d find a way out, sure as hell, _and_ blow it up.

Anyhow, we ran the messages using the program. We told Solo it would take a while, if he wanted to go for a coffee or lunch, or something, but, no, he wanted to watch. He sat at Kuryakin’s bench touching stuff, picking up his pens and looking through his microscope, that kind of thing. We had removed the rack of test tubes. There wasn’t a lot of fluid in them, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted near an expensively tailored suit.

When the program finished and started spewing out data, Solo jumped up and came over as we all crowded round to examine it.

The data didn’t mean a lot to us, but electrified Mr Solo, who thanked us profusely and disappeared. We shrugged and looked again. Was that the coordinates of a map location? Anyone got an atlas? … But, that’s New York City, isn’t it?

oo000oo

A day or two later, our prodigal returned, fully fingered we were glad to see, but with a limp and some big bruises; looked like he needed a night’s sleep, too.

We aren’t demonstrative in Section Eight, but we all stood up to welcome him when he came in. He got quite pink and even said thank you. We showed him how we’d run his program to find out where he was, and he just snorted. “Those are the coordinates of this building,” he said.

We blinked at him and wondered how Mr Solo had found him. “He found me because it reminded him where to look,” he said. Oh yes? And where would that be, could we ask?

“A damp and unpleasant hole near the East River,” he said shortly, and going to his bench was about to sit down when he stopped.

“All right, who’s been messing about here?”

We disclaimed all knowledge and then he said, “You don’t need to tell me – it’s got Napoleon’s prints all over it. Mr Nosy. I might have known. That’s him in a nutshell.”

We avoided each other’s eyes. Dead right. Nuts the pair of them.

**ooo0000ooo**


End file.
